Energy Star standards define power levels for acceptable low-power consumption ratings of electronic devices. To comply with such Energy Star standards, electronic devices often implement one or more low-power modes. Such low-power modes include a full-off power state, a suspend-to-RAM (random access memory) power state, a suspend-to-disk (hibernate) state, and/or one or more types of standby power states. The full-off power state typically consumes the lowest amount of power of any platform power state. However, the full-off power state requires the platform to complete a full boot of the platform software after a power-on operation is re-applied. Such a full boot incurs undesirable boot latencies.
The suspend-to-RAM power state is an alternative to the full-off state. The suspend-to-RAM power state retains the operating state of the platform software as it existed immediately prior to entering the suspend-to-RAM power state. Because the platform software operating state is retained in RAM during the suspend-to-RAM power state, the platform software need only execute portions of a boot process to continue where it left off before entering the suspend-to-RAM state.